Mukul Deva: A surgical strike

Indian thriller-writer Mukul Deva analyses global terrorism in his no holds barred, hard-hitting tetralogy with unflinching precision

A former Major in the Indian army, Mukul Deva was in Delhi when a deadly bomb ripped apart the Sarojini Nagar Market in the capital city. Many innocent lives were lost. This incident enraged Mukul so much that he decided to do something about it.

After serving the army for 15 years, Mukul had taken premature retirement to follow his passion: writing. Mukul had already set up a private consultancy firm and had written a few books on corporate training. But his dream of becoming an accomplished author of hard-hitting and gut-wrenching novels was yet to come true.

Only it became far bigger than he had imagined.

Mukul’s response to the Sarojini Nagar Market blasts found expression in his debut novel, Lashkar. From Lashkar to Salim Must Die to Blowback (releasing worldwide this January), Mukul set out on a quest to explore the dynamics of global terrorism that has become the bane of our time. The fourth title (Tanzim), completing this tetralogy on terrorism, is scheduled to come out next year.

Lashkar was released in 2008 and it became an instant bestseller in India. Salim Must Die was released last year and it also struck a chord with the readers. In a recent book launch in Singapore, Mukul pointed out, with the pride of prescience, that the terrorists who attacked Mumbai in 2008 charted the same route (Karachi to Mumbai) that Mukul had mapped out in his novel. Also, Mukul had pre-empted the Indian government by creating a National Intelligence Command (NIC) in his novel’s pages before the Manmohan Singh government actually created one to deal with terror threats.

The seeds of terror

salimLashkar begins with the blast in Delhi’s SN market and traces the origin of the blasts from the terror camps in Pakistan. Through his characters, Mukul shows that terrorism that comes from Pakistan is a proxy war between the two neighbors who have never trusted each other completely.

India and Pakistan were created in 1947, and from day one, the blood brothers turned on each other. Pakistan complained of being given a moth-eaten state, its eastern (now Bangladesh) and western parts separated by the monstrously huge terrain of India. Pakistan considers the state of Kashmir (J&K) as an occupied territory, a territory that rightfully belongs to the Muslim-majority country. At the UN, Nehru had promised a plebiscite for Kashmiris to decide whether they wanted union with India or Pakistan. That never happened. The two countries went to war on this issue—thrice. According to human rights activist and author Arundhati Roy, Kashmir is the most densely militarized zone in the world.

Last year, she wrote in an essay in Outlook magazine (“Azadi”):“For the past sixty days or so, since about the end of June, the people of Kashmir have been free. Free in the most profound sense. They have shrugged off the terror of living their lives in the gun-sights of half-a-million heavily-armed soldiers in the most densely militarised zone in the world.”

But that is not all. In the 1960s and early 70s, according to the Pakistani narrative, India helped Mukti Vahini, the group that finally made East Pakistan secede from Pakistan. A moth eaten Pakistan, whose heart (Kashmir) and limbs (East Pakistan) were chopped off by a ‘treacherous’ India wounded the young nation’s ego and psyche for good. Pakistan has used this Indian perfidy and perceived monstrosity (of India) as a justification to wage a constant war—a holy war—against India. India needs to be taught a lesson—that is what seems to be driving the terror machines across the border.

That’s also why, after the Afghan Mujahidins defeated the USSR in Afghanistan with USA’s help (money, training, and moral support), Pakistan diverted the zealots to the next holy cause of Islam—extricating Kashmir from the grip of a ‘Kafir’ Hindustan. The result was that Kashmir bled for decades and though much of the militancy is under control now, the human and military cost of India-Pakistan rivalry is egregiously expensive.

However, this cost means nothing to the Pakistani terror merchants—as long as the Americans keep sending their dollars to them. Mukul says at one point: “Almost every nation was aware that the Pakistani General’s claim that he had curbed all terrorist activity in his country was a blatant lie. The whole world knew about it yet refused to acknowledge it. The Americans went about applauding the General and praising him for his help in hunting down the Al Qaida.” A certain Pakistani General comes to mind while reading this.

Terrorism and its discontents

In Lashkar, through a character called Iqbal, Mukul shows how innocent and impressionistic young Muslims are recruited for the cause of the so called Holy Jihad. Iqbal comes from a lower middle class Muslim household in Lucknow and is recruited in a Pakistani terror network. Through Iqbal’s eyes, Mukul authentically shows us the terror camps in Pakistan and how the trainers, the merchants of terror, brainwash the young minds with the gibberish of holy war.

Through Iqbal’s character, Mukul uncovers the real agenda of the Pakistani terror establishment. From being a perpetrator of terror, Iqbal becomes a force of redemption. The turning point comes when Iqbal’s eyes open up to what terror can do to innocent lives. “I am sure that even a fool like you knows that jihad means to strive…to strive for purity within oneself and goodness in society,” a changed Iqbal says to a fellow terrorist at one point in the novel.

Iqbal's metamorphosis occurs because he learns many unsavory truths about the Jihad: “You think they are doing it for us?...They just don’t have the balls for a fair fight. They have lost every damn war with India, that is why they have inflicted this endless, aimless Jihad on India. They are trying to bleed India by forcing it to fight this constant low-intensity war.”

Mukul has kept the plot simple with a handful of main characters. On the one hand is Iqbal’s story that brings in the perspective of a reformed terrorist. On the other, there is Pakistani ISI’s Ex-Brigadier Murad Salim who devises terror plans on a global level. To counter the Pak attack is the Force 22 of India, helmed by the sharp and capable Colonel Rajan Anbu and his team. These characters move the plot which is meticulously and precisely woven with frenetic action in India, Pakistan and beyond.

The Indo-Pak conflict, seen in terms of Pak-exported terrorism and India’s counter-attacks, segues into a broader international Islamic jihad in the second volume, Salim Must Die. The action spreads from China to America and Europe and terrorism takes myriad shapes: from chemical weapons attacks to the use of mini-nuclear bombs (funnily called Chhote Miyan). The details are fascinating.

Mukul’s two volumes are so blisteringly fast paced that one forgets how well-researched the narrative is. He takes the reader on a thrilling ride and shares frank insights with him on terrorism. Not just Pakistan, this realistic writer also takes the USA and the Anglo-American oil conglomerates to task. Mukul proves that the so called war on terror is not about terror but oil: America consumes about 24 percent of the global oil production but it posses less than 2.8 percent of the reserves. Nearly 70 percent of world’s oil and natural gas reserves are in the Middle East-Central Asia region (Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran are the top 3 oil-rich countries). “It is primarily because of this that in mid-1995, the US administration released a National Security document stating that the objective of the war on Iraq was to protect the United States’ uninterrupted and secure access to oil,” says the head of NIC in Salim Must Die. The book is full of such insights.

For those who follow the current affairs would love this series of military thrillers—the first of its kind in Indian English fiction—and would ask for more. It is only appropriate if his readers describe Mukul as the Tom Clancy of India. This reader can't wait to read the next volume in the series.

Firebombing of churches in Malaysia amid ‘Allah dispute’

Anu Garg of A.Word.A.Day writes a very relevant note today: The word religion derives from Latin ligare (to tie or to bind, as in 'ligament'), but it best serves as a tool to divide people. My religion is better than yours. My god true, yours false. What, we have the same religion? No problem, my sect is better than yours.

This reminds me of what is currently happening in Malaysia—a country where the so called “Islamic terrorism” is yet to take root. But first a little detour.

Today, my daughter missed her school bus. Perhaps we were late by a minute or so and the bus driver assumed that my daughter was not going to school today. He left without informing us. Usually he calls us if we are late for the bus—a practice that he follows. We trusted him on this practice. We waited for the bus to come. For what seemed like a long time, it didn’t come. When I called the driver, I understood what had happened. We had missed it.

I took a cab and dropped my daughter at the school. Then I started for my office. The cabbie started talking about the ‘Malaysia problem’.

What Malaysian problem, I asked him. I knew what he was hinting (the firebombing of some churches in Malaysia and the controversy on the use of the word Allah by non-Muslims) at but religious bigotry is the last thing that I want to talk about. That too first thing in the morning.

If you have to know the topic of the day, ask a cab driver. So, it was there like an elephant in the car and a discussion was unavoidable.

Coming from India, religious bigotry and violence is not new to me. There is a minority of people in every religion that despises people of other faiths and other sects and these people are used by politicians to incite violence for political gains. I suspected it is the same group behind the anti-church violence in Malaysia (I was reminded of the burning of churches and church workers in India by the lunatic fringe of the Hindu right). The British tactic of divide and rule is a tried and tested formula and it seldom fails.

The driver agreed with me. No religion teaches violence against people of other faith and their places of worship. It is the narrow-minded tiny minority that uses religion to divide people.

As far as the use of word ‘Allah’ is concerned, following is the stand of Dr. Muzammil H. Siddiqui, a Nadwa, Madina, Birmingham, and Harvard educated scholar and Chairman of the Fiqh Council of America (courtesy Saba Bhai): “There is nothing wrong if Christians or Jews want to use ‘Allah’ for God. In the Qur’an Jews and Christians are mentioned using the name Allah. Arab Christians always used Allah for God. The Arabic Bible has Allah written on almost every page.”

Now, how unreasonable is that?

The Lone Fighter

One of my short stories (The Lone Fighter) has appeared in the Dhaka-based The Daily Star's Weekend magazine:

"That's all trash, brother. Why are you wasting your time?” a voice accosted me, catching me midway between a sentence and the next on a page in The Rachel Papers.

On that evening I was at Kinokuniya. After browsing through a number of classics, I was standing in front of a shelf full of contemporary works. Amid scores of novels dealing with adult themes by writers I didn't recognize, two titles, one by Martin Amis and another by Ian MacEwan, grabbed my attention. I was especially interested in Amis's work. It was his first novel, The Rachel Papers that I was looking at. It was at that point of time that Asato's voice reached my ears: “That's all trash, brother. Why are you wasting your time?”

The intrusive voice offended me. I turned back and saw this little bald man in dishevelled clothes standing right behind me. He had a bespectacled oriental face resting on a slender neck. I couldn't remember seeing him before.

In a hectoring tone, he started a volley of unsolicited commentary, “and the shelf next to this, and even the one next to it…it is all trash, brother” the stranger said, pointing his small fingers to the neighbouring shelves in the bookstore.

What rubbish, I thought. I had just seen a Dr. Zhivago on one of those shelves.

“This is not literature brother. This is all sex and trash,” he remarked.

I felt my raised heckles calming down. In a moment, the man's sincerity had me enthralled.

Read the full text here.

Avatar (2009)

Like many of his admirers, I have been waiting for James Cameron’s Avatar for the last 10 years. I was not aware of any of Cameron’s films before I watched Titanic (1997)—the international smash-hit that became miraculously popular even in countries such as India and China. The only exception was the 1994 terrorism drama—True Lies, that precociously confirmed my fear that after the fall of communism, it was global terrorism that was going to be the American empire’s next bogeyman.

Remember, this was way before 9/11. But I knew that the global managers of perception and culture will replace the red terror with green terror. Every state, as the political theory goes, whose soul is locked in the monster of military-industrial complex, needs an enemy to keep its artificial unity intact. So, one or another kind of terror has to be perennially invented (before you create a hero, you have to create a monster—that is one of the rules of script writing).

So, when a precocious and visionary filmmaker like Cameron announces a venture like Avatar, one’s ears are pricked. I was hungry for any information on this sci-fi film’s progress: Cameron is working on the design of a new camera that can capture the kind of motion he wants to film, he is scouting locations in New Zealand, he is working with Peter Jackson’s special effects team, and so on. The news kept rolling in, whetting my appetite. Meanwhile, I watched some of the earlier ‘alien-themed’ films by Cameron.

When finally Cameron’s labour of love hit the screens and created another big bang box office history, I had to watch it.

Watching Avatar, I have the feeling that the spectre of global terrorism will be over in the next few years. By the end of this phase, the world will be completely globalised and integrated (and in need of a new form of energy). Then the global empire (not just American, mind you) will need a new enemy—it has to come from outer space. The last few decades of Hollywood films (Star Wars, E.T., Aliens) by the trinity of Steven Spielberg, George Lucas and James Cameron have prepared us to face the next phase of terror.

Colonisation as the perennial human quest

In Avatar, Cameron has turned the focus of this terror inwards: he shows us a mirror in which we, the humans, are the terror for the lives of other planets. If human history is the history of finding and conquering the next frontier, the progress of civilisation as a process of perennial colonisation, then, as in the myth, we are doomed like Sisyphus to bear the stone of colonisation and conquest without an end. Since our greed is boundless, so our fate is to meet a violent end.

After colonising our own, humans move out to colonise the creatures of Pandora in this 21st century myth by Cameron. Some see it as a left wing propaganda, taking it as an allegory for the US invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan: US invaded Iraq and Afghanistan (for their oil and poppy fields respectively), destroyed its cities and killed people in these countries. Daisy cutters, education, English—the gifts of the colonisers—have been mentioned in the film. The allusions are unmistakable.

But what is unsettling for me is this: a leftist film attacking greedy businessmen and the government army doing their businessmen masters’ bidding (government armies fighting as if they were mercenaries) coming from an ultra-right Hollywood’s studio (Rupert Murdoch’s 20th Century Fox in this case). I don’t think Murdoch’s studio is behind this film for any ideological reasons but this being a James Cameron film, it means huge profits on the box office.

Despite its performance on the box office, the context of heroism shown in this movie troubles me—that one has to turn against one’s own people (the greedy human race here) to protect innocent people (Navis of Pandora, a moon of the planet of Polyphemus, some 4.3 light years from Earth) only under extraordinary circumstances. The Navis become the target of the greedy humans because they happen to sit atop a rich source of highly sought-after fuel source, unobtanium. The massive military build up, the huge piles of explosives and bombs, a trigger happy Colonel Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang), the intentions of Parker Selfridge (Giovanni Ribisi)—don’t they all signal to the scientific team (Dr. Grace Augustine, Norm Spellman, Dr. Max Patel and Jake Sully) that they are not on a morally noble mission?

What is disturbing in this film’s moral setup is the implication that rising against injustice is a superhuman task, something only for the consideration of extraordinary heroes and messiahs—this may not be Cameron’s intention but I am afraid lazy interpretations are far too common now among dumbed-down audiences. What about the sense of shame and anger against injustice and the everyday heroism that is required of us to qualify as humans? It is one of the tragedies of our civilisation that we have lost our moral compass—and for our material needs (a fresh pair of legs for the protagonist, the paraplegic ex-marine Jack Sully, played by Sam Worthington), we lose sight of universal values of truth and justice. Jack, using an artificially developed body of a Navi, made from a Navi and his own DNAs, is deployed for a mission to learn about the dwellers of Pandora. It is only when he falls in love with a Navi named Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) that his moral compass is reversed.

They have destroyed their mother (Earth) and now these sky people have come to destroy you, tells Jack to Neytiri. Cameron establishes our human greed beyond doubt in the film.

But to the credit of the geeks in the film, when the push comes to a shove, they are the guys who try to save Pandora from the destructive earthlings. Jack and the scientific team led by Dr. Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver) comes to the rescue of the Navi’s, the team includes a retired marine pilot Trudy Chacon (Michelle Rodriguez) who changes side during a violent engagement, giving us a different view of the military term, friendly fire. I didn’t sign up for this, she says when she cuts her allegiance from the marauding gang of sky fighters.

How it feels to betray your own race, asks Colonel Miles Quaritch before meeting his end. Jack does not respond to him but he knows that in a moral dilemma, one has to oppose the aggressor.

A world of rich imaginations

While Pandora’s creatures show the rich imagination of Cameron and his team, one is only temporarily surprised. The creatures are not breathtaking (3D effect might be dazzling though) as we movie-goers have seen so many of those moments that we are reminded of other films while watching the sequences of this film: there are Alice in Wonderland moments (plants growing small at a touch), Jurassic Park moments, Lord of the Rings moments, Apocalypto moments, and so on. I was also reminded of a story from the Quran when a bunch of birds (Mountain Banshees) destroy dozens of fighter planes.

In the Quranic tale, tiny birds (Ababeel) destroy the great armies of Sultan Abraha. According to the Quranic surat Surah Al-Feel (The Elephant), Sultan Abraha’s armies, mounted on huge elephants, came to attack the K’aba (the cube-shaped structure revered by Muslims, considered to be Allah’s house, facing which Muslims all over the world pray). With baked clay stones, the little birds defeat the army of elephants.

The resemblance is striking: Just like the Tree of Souls, where the Navi’s God Eyra resides, is situated upon a great store of unobtanium, Kaba too is supposed to be sitting atop a huge energy field. The Navis pray by chanting mantras, which sound like a mixture of ayats, shlokas and African voodoo incantations.

Then there are colourful and bright trees and vegetation that remind me of the descriptions in one of Urdu’s earliest novels, Firdaus-e-Bareen by Abdul Haleen Sharar.

Pandora as a network

Technologically, what is most interesting in Avatar is Cameron’s imagination of the Pandora world. In Pandora’s ecology, all plants and creatures are interlinked like a network. The Navis can connect with their ancestors through the Tree of Souls, and upload and download their memories—we are told by Dr. Augustine.

The Navis and Pandora’s creatures, like the Mountain Banshee, Toruk, and Direhourse, all need to be connected to work with each other. For example, one has to connect his neural queue to the animal’s antennae to mount it.

Also interesting is the Navi’s concept of energy: whatever you take from the planet, you borrow it. One day you have to give it back to the planet, says Neytiri.

For me, it is this multi-layered narrative of the film, and not just its visual effects, that make it a post-modern epic. As many commentators have noted, the film can prove to be a pioneer of a new era of ‘spectacle cinema’ as opposed to the human scale drama suitable for home and portable screen watching.

Interview with Ahmede Hussain (Bangladesh)

Ahmede Hussain is a Dhaka-based journalist and writer. He was in Singapore late last year to give a talk on compiling and editing anthologies in the Singapore Writers Festival 2009. That was when I met Hussain.

Hussain has recently edited The New Anthem, an anthology of South Asian fiction (Tranquebar, 2009) with contributions from well-known and relatively new writers such as Mohsin Hamid, Amitava Kumar, Kamila Shamshie, Raj Kamal Jha, Tabish Khair, and Monideepa Sahu, among others.

Currently, Hussain is working on his first novel.

Here are excerpts from an interview with Hussain in which he discusses his fascinating journey working on The New Anthem.

When did the idea of ‘The New Anthem’ come to you? What did you want to achieve through this anthology?

I was working on my novel and I came across this huge problem, without solving which I couldn’t move forward: to write novels in a certain language one needs to have a history of writing in that particular language. In India and Pakistan, as both the countries are linguistically divided, English has been the lingua franca, a lot of novels have been written in English, transplanting Indian or Pakistani reality into it is not difficult; you have Sarojini Naidu and RK Narayan. But there is no Narayan or Kamila Shamsie in Bangladesh. I started to read works of Indian and Pakistani writers and, as a reader, I thought it would be wonderful to get them together under one cover. Most of the writers are friends, I talked to them and The New Anthem was born.

I don’t want to achieve anything through the anthology. I wanted to celebrate the diversity of the writing from the sub-continent and the book does exactly that.

Most editors often love to write lengthy editorials or prefaces when they publish an anthology? Why did you keep your editor’s note so brief?

I am glad that you asked this question. I have been criticised by an Indian newsmagazine for writing such a short preface. I wanted to introduce the readers to the book, what binds the writers together and all. I didn’t want to ‘explain’ the pieces, I was scared of doing it.

Was it difficult to approach the more established writers and ask them to contribute to the collection?

Not at all. As I have said, all of them are friends. They were helpful with suggestions.

How did you go about finding the new voices from the sub-continent?

I read and whenever I got anything interesting I took note of it.

How did you choose the stories that you have included in the anthology? Did you look for stories that have a political slant?

I wanted stories that dealt with an individual’s place in history; I think every writer tries to do that. I was for works that handled the theme of ‘writing back’, which is ‘political’. Then again, writing is a by-product of politics.

Was it a struggle to find a publisher for the anthology?

There has been a huge interest in the work. It was smooth sailing for my agent.

Now that you have collected these new voices in the collection, what does it tell you of the future of story-telling in the sub-continent?

I have never thought of this. What an interesting question, Zafar!

What are you working on next?

I am working on my first novel. Set in an imaginary country called the People’s Republic of Bogland, it deals with the relationship between sex and violence.

Simon of the Desert (1965)

This is the time of the year when God and the glamour of technology come together in a bright, dazzling way. Think of the illuminated streets and shopping malls, the festive spirit, the exchange of gifts and the celebration through various symbols of a great spiritual figure’s birth, a figure who changed the destiny of mankind.

I cannot think of a film more appropriate for this time than Luis Bunuel’s Simon of the Desert (1965). Bunuel (1900-1983), a Spanish-born filmmaker who acquired Mexican citizenship, is considered one of the world’s greatest filmmakers. He worked in Mexico, France, Spain and the United States and made a number of remarkable surreal and philosophical films including Belle de Jour, That Curious Object of Desire, and The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, among others.

Simon of the Desert is the last film that Bunuel made in Mexico, using Mexican actors. The film, at its 45 minutes length, is incomplete because the producer ran out of money after five reels.

The film is about the main character, Simon, a stylite, played by Claudio Brook. Simon is an ascetic who spends his life on top of a pillar, atoning for his sins, and dedicating his life to the prayer of God.

In the early part of the film, Simon is about a smaller pillar to a taller pillar, a gift from a rich benefactor—the whole episode suggesting “opportunities for professional advancement” even in the realm of renunciation.

When the film begins, Simon has spent six year, six months and six days—666 being the mark of the beast—on his old pillar. His quest for holiness attracts the devil’s attention to him. The devil appears to him in several forms—a beautiful woman carrying a water pitcher, a seductress dressed in a school girlish sailor suit, a young male shepherd with fake curls, a worldly woman with a fancy hairdo and finally a miniskirted dancer in a New York nightclub.

Each time the devil appears to tempt or distract Simon, he recognises him and does not fall prey to his mischief. Until the final scene when this rupture occurs: the worldly woman tries to tempt him and an airplane flying overhead—the only symbol of modern technology in the film so far—seals the deal. In the next and last scene of the film, we see Simon as a suited and booted young New Yorker in a nightclub throbbing with lusty, dancing bodies. There is a live instrumental rock band on stage and the devil tells Simón that the hipsters are dancing a dance called “Radioactive Flesh”. The film ends there.

Since the film remains incomplete, we are not sure what Bunuel intended to convey but in his interviews he has pointed out certain things. To the question that “the devil takes Simon to the twentieth century and brings him to a noisy discotheque”, he replied: “I don’t know. You must remember that the film is not finished…Simon should have ended up on an even taller column, some twenty meters high, next to the sea, where the hierarchy of the church would come to see him. I filmed for only eighteen days. Since the storyline breaks, I had to look for an ending that didn’t have Simon praying atop his column…I was interested in seeing Simon’s reaction when he returns to the world. But the end result was dubious.”

Bunuel was not known for his spirituality and he often invited unfavourable comments from the Vatican on his films. On his belief system, Buñuel, in a 1977 article in The New Yorker, wrote: “I'm not a Christian, but I'm not an atheist, either…I'm weary of hearing that accidental old aphorism of mine, 'I'm an atheist, thank God.' It's outworn. Dead leaves. In 1951, I made a small film called Mexican Bus Ride, about a village too poor to support a church and a priest. The place was serene, because no one suffered from guilt. It's guilt we must escape from, not God.”

Therefore, showing the airplane, standing in for technology, as a world transformative phenomenon, even a vehicle of the devil, and the crazy, radioactive flesh dance (allusion to nuclear technology and its inherent menaces) do not necessarily mean that Bunuel was preaching against technology. At best he is ambiguous. “I’m always ambiguous,” he has said. “Ambiguity is a part of my nature because it breaks with immutable preconceived ideas. Where is truth? Truth is a myth…”

Yet Bunuel was aware of the loss of the power of spirituality in humans in the modern civilization. “In fact, holiness counts for very little now,” he said. “But though we are not believers, we can feel that as a loss.”

Collapse: Documentary of the year

We all try to make sense of the world in our own ways. We try to understand the world through the information that we receive from our newspapers, TV and internet portals. We see the world through the prism of consciousness or awareness that we build after gleaning information from these sources.

But how much can we rely on the mainstream media to know what is really going on? How much is BS and how much the truth? Is the truth somewhere else? Are things being hidden from us? Are there vested interests that want us to know things partially or differently? We want to know all these and more because we don't know what the future holds for us. Because we care about our future.

Don't believe in anything blindly just because someone is saying it. Always remember this. Use your own brain. Verify what has been stated. Look for evidence and analyze things on your own. Then you might get to the truth. Truth often lies buried under tons of lies and misinformation.

That's why it is important that we question every bit of information that is put forth for our consumption (to manufacture our consent). Remember, we must be skeptical or the truth will evade us. We live in dangerous times, there is no doubt about it.

When things are so complicated, there is a theory that can simplify things for you. In fact, there are many theories going around these days. Let us start with this one. It is a theory by Michael Ruppert, a former US police officer.

If there is one documentary you must watch this year or the next, it is this one: Collapse. It will make you see the world a bit differently. It is based on Michael Ruppert's theory.

On Collapse, America's most respected film critic says, "I don't know when I've seen a thriller more frightening. I couldn't tear my eyes from the screen. "Collapse" is even entertaining, in a macabre sense. I think you owe it to yourself to see it."

Here is the full review.

Interview with novelist Mohammed Hanif

Mohammed Hanif was born in Okara, Pakistan. After leaving the Pakistan Air Force Academy to pursue a career in journalism, he worked for Newsline, India Today, and The Washington Post. While heading the BBC Urdu Service in London, he penned his first novel, A Case of Exploding Mangoes. Here, he is in conversation with Zafar Anjum, co-editor of Writers Connect, in Singapore. The author was in Singapore to attend the Singapore Writers Festival this year.

Why Copenhagen must fail

Looking at the leaked secret Danish document, Copenhagen seems more about money (carbon markets) than about climate change

By Zafar Anjum

I am not a climate change denier. Climate change is a reality because climate is meant to change. It is a dynamic phenomenon of nature and it has been changing ever since it came into existence.

When we talk about ‘climate change’, we refer to the phenomenon of global warming due to the greenhouse gas emissions. Carbon dioxide (CO2) is a major component of the greenhouse gases.

The question is whether it is the humans that are emitting the excessive carbon dioxide that is polluting the earth and making it an unsustainable place.

For years, this was the main question in the climate change debate: one group blamed the humans, another the sun (the sun argument being that the sun was getting hotter and hence was the main culprit behind the earth’s rising temperatures.)

Proponents of both sides of the argument have been championed and funded by vested interests. The ‘humans being responsible for the climate change’ side has been championed by the green brigade. Some political groups even brand them as “the green fascists” who want “to impose their de-industrialisation agenda to kill people”. The other side, the climate change deniers, are often backed up by the traditional energy—oil and coal—industry.

There are climate change scientists in both camps to argue for or against the motion. The common man was confused, not knowing which side to support. Until Al Gore walked into the picture.

Due to a concerted global media campaign, the climate change sceptics kept losing the ground. Once Al Gore went around the world with his documentary An Inconvenient Truth, the room for scepticism shrunk considerably. From AP to the New York Times to CNN, the world’s agenda setting media spoke in one word: Climate change was real and we humans must do something about it! The world’s timid and copycat media repeated what their leaders asked them to print and speak. The global consensus on climate change was thus built.

It didn’t take long for the Nobel Committee in Sweden to award a Nobel Prize to Al Gore and the IPCC, the United Nation’s body studying and building global consensus and policies on climate change.

A few months ago, when Obama won the Nobel Prize for Peace, I was reminded of Gore’s Nobel. True to my gut feeling, within a few weeks of winning the Nobel, Obama ordered a 30,000 troop surge in Afghanistan. More war for peace—the classic Orwellian doublespeak!

Sorry for the digression but I couldn’t help making the remark.

Once the consensus on climate change was built, the world’s most influential people started using the IPCC to push through their agenda. Kyoto happened. It was decided that all countries of the world will have to cut CO2 emissions and a quota system was developed. That’s when climate change stopped being about climate change.

Copenhagen: About climate or about money?

Weeks before world leaders would meet at Copenhagen in December this year, e-mails from scientists working on data gathering for the IPCC at the University of East Anglia (UEA), UK, were leaked. The leaked e-mails, among many other despicable malpractices, established that scientists at UEA were tweaking the data to suit the argument that the temperature on earth was rising.

The leaked e-mails created a brouhaha, casting deep mistrust on the science behind the climate change movement. Regrettably, it didn’t change much at Copenhagen. Only Gore had to cancel his ticketed speech.

But that is not my point. No matter what the science says, we all know that greed is not good. As Mahatma Gandhi has said, there is enough on this earth for everyone’s need but not for everyone’s greed. Unfortunately, in today’s world of globalised corporatism, we live through the constant cycle of consumption and production. We can’t afford a slowdown and it means we have to keep consuming and keep growing. That means more pollution for the earth.

One quick little example: In New Delhi, the government has tried to combat the pollution problem through CNG (compressed natural gas) buses for public transportation. What it achieved in eight years was washed away by the pollution generated by the cars that joined the roads of New Delhi in just one year! But can you ask the Delhiites not to buy cars? That is against the idea of growth.

So, under Copenhagen, countries such as India and China will continue to grow and pollute. So will the developed countries. Only they will have to buy some carbon credits from poor nations where people don’t have enough money to buy cars and run factories. The rulers of poor countries don’t mind this arrangement as long as they get their dirty hands on the moolah! Enter the world of carbon credits and carbon money managed by the World Bank!


Danish text leaked

The leaked “Danish” text, that became available to UK-based newspaper, The Guardian, clearly points out what the world is going to achieve at Copenhagen. The paper reported: “The agreement, leaked to the Guardian, is a departure from the Kyoto protocol's principle that rich nations, which have emitted the bulk of the CO2, should take on firm and binding commitments to reduce greenhouse gases, while poorer nations were not compelled to act. The draft hands effective control of climate change finance to the World Bank; would abandon the Kyoto protocol—the only legally binding treaty that the world has on emissions reductions; and would make any money to help poor countries adapt to climate change dependent on them taking a range of actions.”

The text’s main points include:

• Force developing countries to agree to specific emission cuts and measures that were not part of the original UN agreement;

• Divide poor countries further by creating a new category of developing countries called "the most vulnerable";

• Weaken the UN's role in handling climate finance;

• Do not allow poor countries to emit more than 1.44 tonnes of carbon per person by 2050, while allowing rich countries to emit 2.67 tonnes.

That’s why it is not surprising that James Hansen, the world's pre-eminent climate scientist, said “any agreement likely to emerge from the negotiations would be so deeply flawed that it would be better to start again from scratch.” He is “vehemently opposed to the carbon market schemes—in which permits to pollute are bought and sold—which are seen by the EU and other governments as the most efficient way to cut emissions and move to a new clean energy economy.”

“Hansen is also fiercely critical of Barack Obama—and even Al Gore, who won a Nobel peace prize for his efforts to get the world to act on climate change—saying politicians have failed to meet what he regards as the moral challenge of our age.”

Hansen says climate change allows no room for the compromises that rule the world of elected politics. "This is analogous to the issue of slavery faced by Abraham Lincoln or the issue of Nazism faced by Winston Churchill," he said. "On those kind of issues, you cannot compromise. You can't say let's reduce slavery, let's find a compromise and reduce it 50 per cent or reduce it 40 per cent."

I don’t see any reason why one shouldn’t agree with Hansen. If we can’t throw the politics and greed out of Copenhagen, then it must fail for the good of the larger humanity.

(Published as a blog at www.mis-asia.com)

‘Format the story before you start writing it’: Mukul Deva

Indian thriller writer Mukul Deva’s first two novels, Lashkar and Salim Must Die, are bestsellers in India. His third novel, Blowback, is releasing in January 2009. And he has already finished writing his fourth, the last book in a four-part series on global terrorism.

Mukul is an ex-Indian army officer and a security consultant who, before turning to writing novels, wrote a few books on corporate management. You can find more about him here.

Writers Connect co-editor Zafar Anjum had an exclusive conversation with Deva at his residence in Singapore in November this year. In this interview, Deva shares his insights on writing thrillers and also talks about his journey so far as a writer. If you want to be a thriller writer like Deva, he has some special advise for you.

Cormac McCarthy: On the road to hell

Cormac McCarthy, the author of The Road and No Country for Old Men, on the human race's future, life and writing in general:

If you think about some of the things that are being talked about by thoughtful, intelligent scientists, you realize that in 100 years the human race won't even be recognizable. We may indeed be part machine and we may have computers implanted. It's more than theoretically possible to implant a chip in the brain that would contain all the information in all the libraries in the world. As people who have talked about this say, it's just a matter of figuring out the wiring. Now there's a problem you can take to bed with you at night.

People apparently only read mystery stories of any length. With mysteries, the longer the better and people will read any damn thing. But the indulgent, 800-page books that were written a hundred years ago are just not going to be written anymore and people need to get used to that. If you think you're going to write something like "The Brothers Karamazov" or "Moby-Dick," go ahead. Nobody will read it. I don't care how good it is, or how smart the readers are. Their intentions, their brains are different.

Your future gets shorter and you recognize that. In recent years, I have had no desire to do anything but work and be with [son] John. I hear people talking about going on a vacation or something and I think, what is that about? I have no desire to go on a trip. My perfect day is sitting in a room with some blank paper. That's heaven. That's gold and anything else is just a waste of time.

I'm not interested in writing short stories. Anything that doesn't take years of your life and drive you to suicide hardly seems worth doing.

I don't think goodness is something that you learn. If you're left adrift in the world to learn goodness from it, you would be in trouble. But people tell me from time to time that my son John is just a wonderful kid. I tell people that he is so morally superior to me that I feel foolish correcting him about things, but I've got to do something--I'm his father. There's not much you can do to try to make a child into something that he's not. But whatever he is, you can sure destroy it. Just be mean and cruel and you can destroy the best person.

Creative work is often driven by pain. It may be that if you don't have something in the back of your head driving you nuts, you may not do anything. It's not a good arrangement. If I were God, I wouldn't have done it that way. Things I've written about are no longer of any interest to me, but they were certainly of interest before I wrote about them. So there's something about writing about it that flattens them. You've used them up. I tell people I've never read one of my books, and that's true. They think I'm pulling their leg.

More

Theatre review: Sofaman

Sofaman is a collaboration between Singapore’s The Necessary Stage and The KnAM Theatre from Russia. This intercultural, multilingsofaman_smallual collaboration incorporating soundscape and multimedia focuses on the fundamental questions of today’s postmodern life: what are people looking for? Is the material progress made under the canopy of the globalised and capitalist marketplace that the world has become—billions of consumers, cogs in the wheel of capitalism—enough to satisfy our human yearnings?

The play involves a storyteller and the characters of his stories. The storyteller is the title character who sits on a wheel-chair like contraption and wears a white oversized headgear with a little light in it. He tells stories to a man with a suitcase. In turn, the man with a suitcase exchanges stories with him. But the play comes to life through the stories of the sofaman and the characters that dwell in his stories.

As the play progresses, a Singaporean woman and a Russian man fall in love but they quarrel about where to settle down. Their expectations from life are different, as different as summer and winter (snow). A Western woman develops a bond with a Malay Singaporean who has speech difficulties. Crossing barriers of language, they touch each others’ souls, give comfort to each other. How does it happen? Why does it happen? That is what the play seems to make us to think about.

The play’s characters, set in a mall (or a marketplace), remind us of our disjointed, cold urban lives. Their lives—full of chores, some travel but no family bonds—remind us of the perils of urbanization and how it can create vacuum in our souls. At the same time, the man from Russia, who presumably comes from a less urbanized setting, is consumed with the warmth and opportunities in a new, hyper-urbanized location (read Singapore). It is the juxtapositions of these two worlds—and the conflicting expectations of its inhabitants—that form the core of this drama. The play successfully brings forth the idea that love and rootedness, no matter how much progress we achieve in terms of materialism, will remain the eternal magnets for human souls.

In a way, the play recognizes the ills of life under capitalism. As German economist Sombart observed in the 19th century, even though capitalism enhances productivity and creates a higher material standard of living, it also cause loss in quality of life, robbing people of inner peace, of their relationship to each other and to nature and of the faith of their father. The play might not advocate people to overthrow the capitalist system but in a way it does question the illusions it perpetuates. It portrays the waking of workers (characters) from “thingafication” or “reification” (a construct by 20th century Hungarian philosopher and economist Georg Kukacs), “the inability to see that the human relations created by capitalism were the results of particular historical conditions that could be changed by human will.”

In well over 80 minutes, the play takes us through a surfeit of images and sounds and emotional landscapes of different shades. The audio-visual work is brilliant in the production. But this sometimes takes away from the emotional impact of the story as it interrupts our continuous dream.

This is a complex production and directors Alvin Tan and Tatiana Frolova and writer Haresh Sharma deserve full credit for weaving this intricacy in a presentable, less abstract avatar. In the cast, Siti Khalijah is outstanding but other actors such as Elena Bessonova, Dmitry Bochanov, Vladimir Dmitriev, Julius Foo and Jean Ng shine too. And the cameo by Charlie Chaplin is certainly a casting coup!

Performed in English, Russian and Mandarin
Get your tickets at www.sistic.com.sg

Dates:
5 - 7 Nov & 11 - 14 Nov 2009, 8pm
7 - 8 Nov & 14 - 15 Nov 2009, 3pm

Venue:
The Necessary Stage Black Box
#B1-02 Marine Parade Community Building

Tickets:
$27 | $22*

More here

P. N. Balji: On journalism, journalists and Sri Lanka

Journalism today is under attack everywhere, both in physical and ethical senses. Newspapers are dying in the developed countries. The internet model is still being figured out. Journalists are being fired as newspapers fold up city after city. From the readers' perspective, corporate-controlled media carries less and less credibility.

In the developing countries, the situation is different. The media is struggling between censorship and greed. In India, where the media sprawl is stupendous, there are reports of unethical practices (News for sale: How media is squandering its credibility). In Sri Lanka, both the profession and the professionals are feeling the squeeze.

Veteran Singapore journalist and editor P N Balji shares his views on journalism in the context of the situation in Sri Lanka in this interview with a Sri Lankan paper. His remarks on journalism and his advice to journalists are pure wisdom--something all journalists and editors anywhere in the world should read and keep in mind:

I recommend objective activism. By that I mean present as many sides as possible. And let the readers decide. Media can never give the truth. It can only give some truths. Make sure you give every shade of opinion on a subject. Don’t rush into print with unconfirmed stories. Check and double check. Make corrections the next day if there are inaccuracies.

If you don’t have the passion for the profession, please don’t get into it. With the world becoming more complex and major shifts taking place, we need journalists who can slice and dice the issues and say with confidence and some certainty what it all means to your reader.

More

‘I would rather settle for a mediocre novel…’: Voices from chaos

The Singapore Writers Festival 2009 came to a close on Sunday (1 Nov). Between the opening (23 Oct) and closing of the festival, scores of writers from across the world held forth on literature and writing. The star of the festival was clearly the fantasy writer Neil Gaiman who attracted long queues for autographs. His session was held exclusively in Victoria Theatre and all the tickets were pre-booked. I don’t read fantasy fiction so this did not mean a thing to me. But Singapore’s young readers found an idol in him, this cannot be denied.

Honestly, I did not get to meet all the writers—it was not possible for me. Therefore, I focused on only those writers who interested me. In this post, I am not going to talk about individual sessions. I will freely refer to writers or themes that seem most relevant to my interests or sensibilities.

The theme of this year’s festival was ‘Undercover’. Of course, this theme lends itself to myriad semantic possibilities. But personally speaking, ‘Chaos’ would have been a better choice. Indeed ‘Chaos’ was one of the themes of a discussion that included writers from the sub-continent, namely, novelists Mohammad Hanif (A Case of Exploding Mangoes), Elmo Jayawardena (Sam’s Story), Shashi Warrier (Hangman’s Journal) and Ahmede Hussain (Editor, The New Anthem). The discussion was moderated by the Hong Kong-based Manreet Sodhi Someshwar, the articulate and charismatic author of The Long Walk Home.

Except for Captain Elmo, all these writers were new to me. I had exchanged emails with Hussain before but that was like two years ago. I had met Hanif several years ago when he was with the BBC’s London office. I tried to remind him of our meeting that he vaguely seemed to remember. Or was he being polite? I don’t know. Anyway, I did not want to press on it as it was a brief professional encounter. I was glad I could meet him again, that too in a new avatar, I told him.

Throughout the festival, I was looking for one word or one term that could summarize the essence, the zeitgeist of our times. I looked at the books that were there on display in the Arts House bookstore. I tried to listen to the questions that people posed to their favourite writers. What was the gist, what was the spirit, I tried to figure out.

Looking at the titles on display, one of the themes that strongly emerges is that of political power, violence and tyranny. While Elmo’s Sam’s Story (republished in India by Penguin) deals with the futility of ethnic conflict and war, Hanif’s A Case of Exploding Mangoes deals with the life of a dictator and state repression. Manreet focuses on the violence in Punjab in The Long Walk Home and Warrier’s recent books study the human condition in the Indo-Pak conflict zone, Kashmir. Hussain, in his first anthology of short stories from many new and well-known sub-continental writers, collects voices that again raise issues of conflicts and fundamentalism of all stripes, among other themes.

Writers are not supposed to offer solutions. They are supposed to ask questions, pose moral dilemmas. This is what these writers have done with their novels—I have not read all of them but that is the sense I get (I have read Elmo’s great novel and have reviewed it here; I have also read Hanif’s novel and it is marvelously funny and biting). Still, emerging from the sub-continental chaos and America’s war on terror, there isn’t a single theory or philosophy or vision that can inspire us to a new future. From these books, from the discussions that these books spawned, the absurdity of violence is evident. But where is the hero or the protagonist that can show ‘us’ in our complete nakedness? We can laugh at General Zia’s antics but what about our passive collusion in this chaos? Where is the rebellion? Where is the man or woman who refuses to go along with the side of cruelty?

The most dangerous place on earth

During Hanif’s session, most people were curious about the daily life in Pakistan. How quotidian was it? Hanif satisfied people’s queries with his quintessential humor. People in Karachi still went out for dinner with family and friends, he said. Their discussion would range from fashion shows to the next possible bomb blast. He said that the 24 hour news cycle had made the things worse. Journalists are excited when there are terrible stories to tell but they feel crestfallen when it is quiet for a few days. Hanif, who lived in London for about a decade, now permanently lives in Karachi. I wish for more peace, more normality, he said.

Hanif said that he was suspicious of lists such as the top 10 most dangerous places in the world and the top 10 most beautiful people in the world. These lists keep changing, he said.

Should writers become activists, I asked the ‘Chaos’ panel. I had Arundhati Roy in mind when I asked this question. I don’t feel any moral responsibility, said Hussain. ‘I see, I don’t touch,’ is his motto. Hanif said that writers are generally self-centered people who care more about a turn of phrase than an actual cause. But I do what I can, he said. Warrier was also of the same opinion. It was only Captain Elmo who said that he was actively engaged in charity work in Sri Lanka.

Someone from the audience asked if chaos was necessary for creativity. This question came in various forms in different fora: Singapore, despite being an advanced country with all kinds of material comforts, does not produce much literature, whereas the sub-continent, despite the chaos and fracas, creates world-class literature. Why is that so? According to Warrier, the problem is essentially arithmetical. India alone has more than a billion people while Singapore has about 5 million people. So, a billion people naturally produce more writers. Also, there are many regional languages in India which support the culture of reading and writing. Print runs of vernacular titles go in the range of 20,000 to 200,000 whereas novels in English become best-sellers when they sell more than 5,000 copies.

According to Hanif, chaos does not necessarily help create great literature. The Swedes still manage to get out some decent novels, he said. Prosperity is good for writers, Hanif said. I would rather settle for a mediocre novel in a less chaotic situation than a great novel in a chaotic and violent set up, he said. One could understand where Hanif was coming from. Father of an 11-year old son, the safety and security of his family must be most prominent for him. I found both Hanif and Hussain ruthlessly honest—only Hanif is more humorous and Hussain a bit more philosophical.

On and off stage, Elmo voiced his concern about the difficulties that first time writers face in finding publishers. A first time writer’s failure (in getting published) discourages many other would-be writers, he argued. He also lamented about the greed of publishers who sold books with marked up prices, taking them farther from the reach of ordinary readers. He wants the gram sellers in Sri Lanka to become book-sellers!

I also had an opportunity to listen to Qiu Xiaolong (Death of a Red Heroine) and Naldo Rei, East Timorese resistance fighter. Both talked about political repression and violence. Xiaolong’s father suffered during the Chinese cultural revolution and his brother never recovered from it. What if I was in his place, wondered Xialong. He also mentioned the censorship in China that he faced while getting his books translated for the mainland.

Naldo is a different case. He was a freedom fighter and a torture victim during the occupation of East Timor. He was imprisoned when he was 9. Later he became a student leader and learnt English in Australia. His poetry now inspires thousands of his countrymen.

Though my interactions with the writers were personally enlightening, I came home depressed because I have a feeling that the chaos would not end anytime soon. Did people between the two Great Wars feel the same? Only, we don’t have the Camus and Sartres of our age to explain the chaos to us. The world is becoming more violent and life more absurd by the day and there are no heroes to look up to in the post-modern anarchy. It is a difficult challenge for any writer to make sense of the world that we live in. I only wish more power to the pen of writers like Hanif, Manreet, Elmo and Warrier and Ahmede!

Book Review: The Routledge Concise History of Southeast Asian Writing in English

It can be argued that Southeast Asian Writing in English has not achieved as much attention as African Writing in English or Indian Writing in English, even though English as a language reached most parts of the world wave after wave as a result of colonialism in the 19th and 20th centuries. Hong Kong, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur and Manila have been major outposts under British and American colonialism, but the output in English from these big Asian cities has not made much impact on the global literary landscape, the same way that writings from India or Africa have. Where is Southeast Asia’s answer to Midnight Children or a House for Mr. Biswas or Things Fall Apart?

Moreover, many colonial era writers made this region their hunting ground for exotic tales –Anthony Burgess in Malaysia, Orwell's work on Burma (Burmese Days), Graham Greene's on Vietnam (The Quiet American) and the stories by Somerset Maugham (The Casuarina Tree), to name a few expat writers. Did they leave any impact on the local writers? What kind of writing emerged in Southeast Asian countries (mainly, The Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore and Hong Kong) in the latter half of the 20th century when colonial powers receded from the region? What kind of themes and issues are being investigated into by contemporary writers and poets in Southeast Asia?

In the book under review, the authors, associate professors in the Department of English and Literature at the National University of Singapore, try to answer these and many more questions. The volume traces the development of literature (focusing on fiction, poetry and drama) in the region with its historical and cultural contexts.

To attempt a volume like this is clearly a challenging endeavour as the authors themselves admit that this kind of literary historiography works within two limiting factors—linguistic and regional. The authors, in their introduction, submit that their aim in writing this book is not for the chimera of ‘objectivity’ but for persuasion and critical awareness.

Post introduction, the first two chapters in the book provide historical and literary contexts of writing in English in the region. The fourth chapter surveys Malaysian and Singaporean writing up to 1965, followed by a chapter on Filipino writing to 1965. Then there are three chapters, each providing a regional overview of narrative fiction, poetry and drama between 1965-1990 in Southeast Asia. After this, there is an independent chapter exploring the expatriate, diasporic and minoritarian writing—this is where you can read about the writings of Burgess or Maugham. The last four chapters look at contemporary fiction, poetry and drama. It also explores the prospects of Southeast Asian writing in English (where does it go from here) in indulges in future gazing. This last chapter also includes some details on publishing in the digital medium—the medium of the future—and how it is not just replacing text but has also led to increased generic experimentation and creation of a larger audience. It is a good sign as it indicates that the authors understand the increasing importance of digital media’s role in the dissemination and consumption of literature.

Overall, The Routledge Concise History of Southeast Asian Writing in English is a very useful companion for those who seek a handy understanding of Southeast Asian writing in English. The astute authors of this volume have enriched it with maps, box items, a glossary of terms, and references. There is also a guide to further reading that can help quench the thirst of those who want a deeper understanding of the Southeast Asian literatures and cultures.

http://writersconnect.org/index.php/archives/989

Review: Inglourious Basterds

Before we get to talk about Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds (2009), let’s have a quick quiz. Who, among the three infamous dictators—Hitler, Stalin and Mao—caused the maximum number of civilian deaths in his country (“democide”)?

If your answer is Hitler, then you are wrong. According to historical estimates, the Chinese communist leader Mao Tse-tung’s policies and actions led to the deaths of nearly 77 million of his countrymen, surpassing those killed by Nazi leader Adolf Hitler (20 million) and Soviet Premier Josef Stalin (61 million).

And yet how many Hollywood films are made with Mao as the arch villain? Or even Stalin?

It’s not that Hitler becomes less evil because he killed less number of people than Stalin or Mao did. The German dictator’s genocidal atrocities or policies of eugenics were despicable. Still, the constant projection of Hitler as the only evil doer in the western man’s consciousness baffles me. Excepting Idi Amin, I haven’t seen Hollywood going after other dictators as vigorously as they go after the fuehrer.

Clearly, Hollywood is fascinated by Hitler: Almost every year, Hollywood studios plan a slate of anti-Nazi movies. Last year, the offerings peaked (with "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas," "Adam Resurrected," "The Reader," "Valkyrie") as The New York Times film critic A. O. Scott noted: “A minor incursion of this sort is an annual Oscar season tradition, but 2008 offers an abundance…” (Why so many Holocaust films now, and for whose benefit?)

Scott goes on to ask: “The number of Holocaust-related memoirs, novels, documentaries and feature films in the past decade or so seems to defy quantification, and their proliferation raises some uncomfortable questions. Why are there so many? Why now? And more queasily, could there be too many?”

Perhaps Scott wrote the piece too late in the day. Or maybe the failure of Death Proof hastened it. Apparently Tarantino had been working on the script of Inglourious Basterds for ten years, even before he did Kill Bill. He is said to have delayed the project because he was not finding the right ending. I can understand his dilemma but he never resolved it. In a relatively well-made Holocaust revenge film, it is the ending that rankles, that seems a bit forced and contrived. A brilliant opening sequence should have been offset with a masterful last scene but it doesn’t. It is a narrow miss that prevents a good Inglourious Basterds from leapfrogging to being great.

I was curious about the film’s title from the beginning (and thought Vishal Bhardwaj stole it for his Kaminay) but like most other motifs in Tarantino’s films, this too turned out to be derivative (or homage, whatever you may choose to call): It comes from a European film Quel maledetto treno blindato (1978) which was released in the USA by the title The Inglorious Bastards. Maybe that’s the reason why Tarantino film’s title is slightly misspelled. Major change that one, huh?

Set in the second world war, Tarantino’s fairy tale Inglourious Basterds(it was earlier meant to be titled as "Once Upon a Time in Nazi-Occupied France") has a four track narrative underpinned by a main villain—Christoph Waltz as the Nazi Col. Hans Landa, a polyglot evil genius and a Jew-sniffer par excellence. There is the perpetrator (the Nazi occupiers of France, represented by Col. Hans), the victim (Mélanie Laurent as Shosanna Dreyfus), the spy (Diane Kruger as double agent Bridget von Hammersmark) and the avenger (Brad Pitt and his team of Inglorious Bastards).

As I have mentioned earlier, the opening scene of the film is excellent, classy as a masterpiece, more visceral and evil than scenes of scalping mined throughout the film. Christoph Waltz establishes himself in this very first scene and you look forward to seeing him time and again on the screen. After Waltz’s introduction, when Pitt and his mates make their onscreen appearance, they don’t make that much of an impact—even though Pitt’s voice and body language are well-directed. Eli Roth (as Sgt. Donny Donowitz), with his deadly clubbing scene, is chilling—more chilling than the scalping scenes that looked a bit fake to me.

When it comes to violence and bloodshed, Tarantino seems to take unpretentious pleasure in making people suffer and bleed. He did it with some sophistication in Jackie Brown (Samuel Jackson’s killing of Chris Tucker and Robert De Niro) but it has all been gruesome and in-your-face in Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill Vol. 1 & 2. His films, one can argue, document the ways in which violence can be inflicted upon people, good or bad. Inglourious Bastards abounds in some new (different from his past oeuvre) methods of sending folks to the next world: scalping, clubbing and even the good old technique of strangulation.

What redeems Tarantino’s nearly B-grade penchant for portrayals of violence is his great ear for dialogues. And there are plenty of clever lines in this film. I loved the line by Goebbels in the film when he says, ‘America’s gold medals can be weighed in negro sweat’. But my favourite still remains the Harvey Keitel line from Reservoir Dogs: “If you shoot me in your dream, you better wake up and apologize to me.”

Despite the unusual screen time (nearly three hours), the revenge drama flows smoothly. As the scenes roll out, you recognize the typical Tarantino stamp on them: the book-like chapterisation, the set-piece of the theatre’s burning down (the revenge), the shootout scene in the restaurant (reminiscent of the garage scene in Reservoir Dogs but amazingly executed), and the imagined sex scene between Goebbels and his assistant (reminiscent of the sex scene between Robert De Niro and Bridget Fonda in Jackie Brown). Tarantino’s favourites Samuel L. Jackon and Harvey Keitel are also present in this film through their voices.

Even though cinema is all make-believe and cinematic reality is different from historical reality, it is the film’s ending that is dissatisfying—or more than dissatisfying, irrational (yes, even fiction, to succeed, must make us suspend our disbelief!). Why would a hardcore Nazi officer change side? If he did not believe in Hitler’s philosophy, why did he comply with his orders for so long? Oh, yeah, he was just doing his job and somebody tipped him offscreen that the Hitler was anyway going to lose the war!

If you don’t have a higher threshold for suspension of disbelief, you may as well forgive the film’s somewhat irrational ending (or not even notice it) and come home thoroughly entertained. As for me, I would like to ask Tarantino what was the alternative ending that he had in mind.

War, love & sex

The Deer Hunter, a 1978 war drama co-written and directed by Michael Cimino, is not your typical Vietnam war film. It's not your Apocalypse Now or Platoon. Perhaps its appeal lies in its small town characters, primarily factory workers, played by Robert De Niro, Christopher Walken, John Savage and some other actors. Meryl Streep plays the love interest of Christopher Walken. Robert De Niro is also interested in her. The innocence and playfulness of their lives suddenly vanishes when they are thrust into the Vietnam War. The war upturns their lives and they are never the same again. The scenes in Vietnam, especially the underwater prison scenes and the Russian roulette scenes, are unforgettable.

More than the performances (though Robert De Niro, Christopher Walken, John Savage and streep have given fine performances in this film), it's the film's structure and its editing that struck me as unique. The film starts with scenes of happiness, a bunch of wild, playful factory workers, wedding and frolicking scenes in the small town and ends with a death and a funereal atmosphere engulfing the townsfolk. But life goes on. The editing is without frills. Notice it especially when the story goes back and forth between America and Vietnam.

It is difficult to imagine soldiers like Robert De Niro, Christopher Walken, John Savage and many others coming to Singapore for R&R during the Vietnam war. But this is largely what happens in Saint Jack, a 1979 film based on 1973 novel by Paul Theroux.

The movie, which was banned in Singapore until a few years ago (2006), is about Jack Flowers, an Italian American pimp in Singapore, who tries to make money by setting up his own bordello. His plans go awry when he is beaten up by the Chinese mafia and his brothel is destroyed. He goes a little more deeper into more humiliating circumstances before he finally wakes up to his own dehumanization and finds his moral compass.

Ben Gazzara plays the main character in the film, and I loved his performance. He is totally into the role. The film's director, Peter Bogdanovich, has done a great work--at least it shows us the Singapore of 1970s. This was the first Hollywood film to be shot on location in Singapore.

According to the director, the film was suggested by Orson Welles to Peter's Guru, Roger Corman. Corman bankrolled the project and Peter came over to Singapore to shoot the film. The Singapore government was opposed to the film's shooting. Peter had to create a fake synopsis (more than 35 pages long!) for a film called "Jack Of Hearts". The film was shot and made purported to be "Jack Of Hearts" and not Saint Jack. Peter counts it as one of his two best films (his most famous and acclaimed film being The Last Picture Show, 1971). It won him the best director award at Venice.

The film is part of, as it were, Singapore's history now. Though there is some nudity in it, there is an uncanny charm in Ben Gazzara and his friend's character, who dies in the film. Even Peter Bogdanovich plays a part as Eddie Schuman.

There is something in the picture--maybe it is Ben's moodiness, his interpretation of the Jack character, his walk and talk, his gait, his soulful gaze, his philosophical smile--that makes you aware that you are watching a classic. I was moved (and disturbed) by the scene where Jack sends his dead friend's ashes to Hong Kong via post and the post office girl flicks the pack (Jack says the packet contains personal effects) into a pile of postal stuff. Life, gone--just like that! What if it were me in that box? Is life so meaningless that it could be flicked off and forgotten like that? It is elements like these that ennobles the film, despite its seedy setting, and in turn, the viewers.

In Other Rooms, Other Wonders

I recently published a review of Daniyal Mueenuddin's collection of short stories, In Other Rooms, Other Wonders, at Writersconnect.org. To read the full text of the review, go here. Excerpts:

Though the stories do reveal and expose the poverty and the exploitation of the poor by the rich, and the human desire of doing better in life, escaping the trap of being limited by one’s circumstances, they also tell us about the dying feudal world of Pakistan—“the farm and the old feudal ways, the dissolving feudal order and the new way coming, the sleek businessmen from the cities.” All this is happening in a Pakistan which was supposedly carved out of India to develop as an exemplary Islamic country (with secular values). Instead of establishing an egalitarian society, Pakistan came to be ruled by the feudal lords who control all levers of power in the country. The vast majority of its poor citizens, as a result, suffer, struggling for their survival, conniving and scheming to come up in life by any means. Religion is the last thing on their minds.

For an Indian, it is not difficult to understand the moral ambiguities of the feudal rich. But what surprises me, and must would have done to most other readers of this book in the West, is the lack of morality—be it in business dealings, law enforcement or matters of sex and matrimony—in the characters, cutting across layers of society (even though, perhaps Daniyal is a little biased as he shows Helen, an American in love with a Pakistani Sohail, in Our Lady of Paris, to be morally upright, and not deviant as he shows Husna in In Other Rooms, Other Wonders or Zainab in Provide, Provide).

One might read a book on Pakistan and expect to read a story or two on fundamentalists and Islamic terrorists (his three fellow expat Pakistani writers’ recent books directly or indirectly deal with terrorism: The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid, Burnt Shadows by Kamila Shamshie, and The Wasted Vigil by Nadeem Aslam). Daniyal’s book is about Pakistan but there is not a single character in his stories who is a fanatic. There are devout Muslims, they tell their rosaries, say their prayers but they still indulge in amoral acts. This juxtaposition, this revelation, must be interesting to most readers, affording one the satisfaction that Pakistani Muslims too are like any other people—the rich and poor not necessarily being gentle, innocent and benevolent. This (realization) was so at least in my case. That was the biggest reward of reading this book.

What do you look for in a great, even good, writer? A unique and exact way of looking at things and finding the right context for expressing that way of looking, as Raymond Carver once said. In Daniyal’s case, that talent is very much on display. I rate Daniyal’s In Other Rooms, Other Wonders very highly and can safely say that this debut collection can be put in the same league as The Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri (US/India) and A Thousand Years of Good Prayers by Yiyun Li (US/China). With his very first book, Daniyal has shown the talent of a special way of looking at his universe. A writer like him should be around for a time. I wish him longevity.

More

Suhayl Saadi Uncensored

I met the Scottish novelist and writer Suhayl Saadi (he was born in Yorkshire in 1961 of Afghan-Pakistani parents, and grew up in Glasgow, becoming a medical doctor) a couple of years ago in Singapore during a lit fest. He came across as a very charming, fearless and articulate speaker during one of the panel discussions. It's been a while since I caught up with him, but when his new book, Joseph’s Box (2009) came out, I could not resist the temptation of asking him a few questions. Always courteous, Suhayl obliged and the result is a fascinating interview with this writer who treads a path less traveled by most authors of South Asian descent. Please read the full interview here to understand what I mean by the road less traveled in this case.

Excerpts:

What is your take on e-publishing and the future of books? Will e-publishing and Google’s espresso instant books (machines can print and bind a paperback in 4 minutes flat) change the future of publishing, how writers distribute their books and reach out to the readers? Will the publishers cease to be the gatekeepers of content?

I hope so. It needs a revolution. I would like to (here, I have delusions of Sidney Poitier) ‘knock that big old white bastard off his hill’. Let’s democratise but try not to continue to dumb-down. There are far too many stupid, and stupefying, books out already by chefs, gardeners, estate agents, DIY experts and vacuous ‘celebrities’ which are heavily promoted in the ‘front fifty feet’ of bookshops and this mirrors the inanity of much television. Give ‘em what they want! is a big lie and is a recipe for the incipient snuff-movies and ritual humiliation which now pass for entertainment and which, ultimately, are tools of social control and mechanisms for the concentration of wealth. It’s not really about gatekeeping - that’s merely an instrumentalisation of these strategies - it’s really about what kind of human society, what kind of world, we want. The bottom line is that writing, invented in Iraq 5,000 years ago, is important and at some level, is feared by those in power. Stalin, the one-time published and acclaimed poet, knew - and stated - this perfectly well when he attempted to justify banning Dostoevsky’s works. Stalin was terrified of Dostoevsky and even eventually, of Gorki. The process of capitalist censorship is more systemic, less directed, more subtle, less obvious, but in the end it is even more effective in the engineering of pliant societies. Of course, Google is a big white corporation, too. We have to be attentive - to paraphrase from the Spanish writer, Ibn Tufayl, in order to stay alive, we have to remain awake!

More